Loft Life in a Building Once Evacuated Over Matzos

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Rob Swainston is one of many artists living at 475 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who are now more secure about their homes thanks to a law that gives loft buildings a path to residential status.CreditCreditNicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Bill Murray sublet for a summer. A contingent of dazzling Danes also moved in. So did the photojournalist Tim Hetherington, whose death in Libya in 2011 caused mourners to gather en masse at the building, known in their circle as the kibbutz because so many photographers lived there.

Life has changed — in ways fun, puzzling, tragic and mundane — for the loft dwellers of 475 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the six years since the building rocketed to citywide infamy after fire officials concluded that the illegal matzo factory in its basement could explode.

Perhaps the biggest change is that the building is now legal for residents, something that seemed a distant dream on that frigid night in January 2008 when the New York Fire Department ordered everyone out. Along with matzo that could apparently go boom, firefighters also found broken standpipes and a faulty sprinkler system.

Drama returned in 2011, when representatives of several agencies raided the building, looking for evidence of illegal conversions and safety problems, according to a spokesman from the Fire Department, which was involved in the operation. (Reached by phone, the landlord, Nachman Brach, said that he did not know what the raid was about and that it amounted to nothing. “I don’t want to be in the paper!” he said.)

Nowadays, residents are largely safe in their fairy-tale-of-New-York homes — sprawling industrial spaces that double as photography, printmaking, music and painting studios, many of which look out onto the Manhattan skyline across the river. This is thanks to the 2010 loft law, which grants a path to residential status and rent stabilization to eligible buildings that apply before the middle of March.

The streets around it are swiftly changing too. The new crop of glass luxury towers is steadily marching south, and boutique shops are following, including an olive oil store that opened up nearby.

Among those feeling mixed is Guy Lesser, a writer and longtime resident who cheered at the recent arrival of a much-needed grocery store. “I don’t love yuppies and Eurotrash,” he said, “but the fact is it’s gotten more livable.”

His friend and neighbor, Eve Sussman, an artist, views the changes more darkly, as a “spear in the heart.”

“The loft law is a bulkhead against a really big war,” said Ms. Sussman, who, with her husband, Simon Lee, a photographer, moved into 475 Kent 15 years ago.

Either way, the building remains a big draw for the high-achieving creative set. Already home to an admirable stable of established photographers, artists and musicians, it saw the arrival last summer of Mr. Murray, who was shooting a film in Brooklyn with Naomi Watts. A quiet presence, Mr. Murray went on to melt residents’ hearts when he took one of their neighbors, who was dying of liver disease, out for supper at the nearby upscale restaurant, Diner. “He was very down to earth, and demure,” said one resident, who did not want to be identified.

Mr. Brach would not say what the rents were, but residents said the top end was around $5,000. Some lofts have also been divided by Mr. Brach to form multiple bedrooms that, residents say, go for about $1,500 each.

Rising grungily from the streets of South Williamsburg at the edge of the East River, 475 Kent is home to about 100 lofts and perhaps twice as many residents. After the 2008 evacuation, residents were mired in a thicket of building code and fire violations and the city’s investigation of how to safely remove the matzo wheat — which at one point was considered a hazardous material. They despaired over when and if they would get back in. But driven by the same fierce determination that led them to colonize and rehabilitate 475 Kent a decade and a half ago, they assiduously worked to save their homes. Among their efforts: getting trained in fire safety and painstakingly measuring and digitally mapping out floor plans, paving the way for a new sprinkler system.

They were allowed back in just over three months after being evacuated, though many had given up and found homes elsewhere. Many of those who stayed now enjoy some protection against skyrocketing rents because they have applied for coverage under the loft law. (The building must be brought up to residential fire and safety codes, a process that could take years, before it can be considered a legal residential loft building.)

So far, according to figures from the city’s Loft Board, 74 buildings have been registered under the new law, though resident advocates say that the figure could, and should, be higher, but that city outreach has been thin.

So at 475 Kent, life can march on. There are more children there than ever. Ms. Sussman has built a black box theater into her loft, and her neighbor and friend Rob Swainston this year installed a 5,000-pound printing press that is the centerpiece of his print shop, Prints of Darkness. The aforementioned dazzling Danes also moved in, the main one being a model/musician who, according to Ms. Sussman, always has “a revolving door of Scandinavian roommates, one more beautiful than the next.”

Though now secure in her home, with its do-it-yourself industrial kitchen and an assemblage of found furniture, Ms. Sussman said she worried about the fate of fellow artists in the city and those to come.

“Artists need to live cheaply. We need to cut corners. We want to build things ourselves,” she said. “You can’t create a bohemian subculture. It has to create itself.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Loft Life in a Building Once Evacuated Over Matzos Is More Secure, and Legal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe